Wanna Talk About Emails? Here’s Someone Who Knows All About It *Open Thread*

Before we get to the person who knows a whole lot about emails, and being asked for them, let’s set the stage just a little bit. As you no doubt know by now, at long last, Hillary Clinton finally addressed this whole email kerfluffle.

Now, I trust you don’t expect that you did anything other than deny, deny, deny, “I did not expose national security with that email,” kind of thing. Or my favorites, her commenting on the private emails she had, like about her daughter’s wedding, or the death of her mother, as an attempt to stifle any real questions (“how dare you ask you her private emails? What are you, a MONSTER?? Her mother died, you horrible person!” Like that.). Her justification for why she ONLY used a private email account was just flat out laughable:

[…] Holding her first press conference in nearly two years, the likely presidential candidate defended the account, saying it was chosen only for the “convenience” of not having to use two personal devices while serving as secretary of State.

“Looking back, it would’ve been better if I’d simply used a second email account and carried a second phone, but at the time, this didn’t seem like an issue,” she said.

Clinton two weeks ago said she now uses both an iPhone and a Blackberry. […] (Click here to read the rest.)

Oh, my good heavens. I am reminded of this car insurance commercial:

No, that is not how ANY of this works. Many of us who aren’t that tech savvy could manage to add another email address to our cell phones. And if you want to be President of the United States, you sure as HELL should be able to do something as basic as that.

Which brings me to one of our favorite US Representatives, Trey Gowdy, as he discusses the Hillary Clinton press conference with Greta van Susteren:

I have more questions about all of this now, too, Rep. Gowdy. There was much in Gowdy’s response, and I urge you to listen to the whole clip if you can.

And if you want a bit of a laugh about this press conference, IJ Review has a compilation of some VERY funny Tweets about the whole thing. One of my favorites is a depiction of the server she used. Too funny.

But let’s now turn our attention to someone who knows ALL about people demanding her emails. That would be former Alaska Governor, Sarah Palin. Way back in 2011, I wrote at my old blog site about Palin’s emails which were requested IMMEDIATELY after she was nominated as VP by David Corn at Mother Jones. Naturally, they thought they were going to get a MINEFIELD of evidence to use against Gov. Palin, to demonstrate how she really treated her staff, how she conducted business, and a host of other “gotchaas” they were CERTAIN they were going to get. They were wrong, of course. Absolutely wrong. In fact, the release of all of her emails showed quite the opposite. Hence why you have heard so very little about them since. (In my blog post from a while back, I highlighted that one of the things with which Palin dealt were death threats, about which we have heard very, very little. Gee, wonder why? Oh, and it was The Daily Telegraph that reported on those threats. Sure don’t remember seeing much from the MSM in this country about them, do you?)

Governor Palin wrote this piece for Fox News about what she faced, and what Sec. Clinton SHOULD face. From Fox News:

The latest Obama administration scandal involving Hillary Clinton’s emails has many Americans discussing private email accounts used by government officials, and clarification is in order.

It’s appropriate and proper for a politician to use private email for personal and campaign business. This is what I did as governor of Alaska in order to be in compliance with the law, which requires that personal or campaign business not be conducted using public resources such as a government email account. There is a firm line separating the two.

However, that’s not what we see with this Clinton email scandal. As Secretary of State under Obama, Hillary Clinton used private email accounts on a privately maintained server 100 percent of the time for 100 percent government business. That’s unethical, no doubt illegal, and flies in the face of all claims of transparency. Hillary Clinton and her staff weren’t trying to be in compliance with the law; they were skirting it altogether.

The release of my emails was a great boon for Alaska’s tourism industry because dozens of national reporters descended on Alaska to pour through tens of thousands of pages of my emails looking for some smoking gun. They even crowd-sourced the work out to the general public to help them look for dirt! They were sorely disappointed.

That they were. I remember the glee with which the big newspapers like WaPo asked for volunteers to read through these emails to find dirt on Palin. And what they found was quite the opposite: a hard working governor who loved her state and the military. And that was from CNN.

[…] First, some background: I know something about how annoying FOIA requests can be for public officials. After I returned home from the 2008 vice presidential campaign, the state of Alaska was flooded with innumerable FOIA requests to see literally every single email I ever wrote while governor. It was an overwhelming request for a small population state with limited resources. But our system of government relies on transparency, and that means public officials must suck it up and let the public see whatever they want.

When FOIA requests bombarded us, investigators and our attorney general’s office were given full access to all of my state and private emails. The only emails redacted were the very few that were protected by attorney/client privilege – a determination agreed upon by my lawyers and the Attorney General’s office who reviewed them. In other words, an independent third party reviewed every email. There was no chance for any “smoking gun” to escape detection because nothing was kept secret in any way. Everything was done in the most transparent way possible.

Contrast that with the way Secretary Clinton has handled transparency. She created private email accounts for herself and her staff on a private email server that she controls completely.

She hasn’t handed over the server to any independent party for review, and it’s already too late to do so because for all we know someone might have already deleted any trace of incriminating emails to and from Secretary Clinton and her aides. This is the opposite of open and transparent government and obviously doesn’t follow the rules.

An honest politician has nothing to fear from the public seeing her emails. I know this. Eventually all but those few redacted emails of mine were released to the public and remain online to this day for anyone to read at any time.

[…]

All they found was evidence of an administration doing what the people sent us to do – work hard for them. My favorite summary of the email findings came from CNN’s Drew Griffin who reported: “I think what we’re seeing here is a hard-working governor, working hard for the state of Alaska, a lot of discussion about policy, about taxes, about cutting budgets, a lot of just mundane state government work.” […] (Click here to read the rest of Gov. Palin’s piece.).

Not to be a cynic or anything, but I am going to guess that is NOT going to be the case with Hillary Clinton’s emails, if Congress can ever get their hands on them. I am gonna bet there are plenty of things in there over this private server that are matters of national security. How could there NOT be?? She did ALL OF HER WORK AS SECRETARY OF STATE ON HER PRIVATE EMAILS!! Sheesh!

Sorry – not yelling at any of y’all. Just aggravated and frustrated at how flippant and cavalier Clinton was about all of this, how disingenuous, how deceptive, and how emotionally manipulative she tried to be. Makes me wonder just how in the HELL I supported her so much seven years ago.

That was a great interview by Bret Baier. And I am sure it is hard for El-Sisi to answer the question. Unfortunately, these politicians can’t really say what they want abt Obama having seen how vindictive he is. I can only imagine what Obama would do to El-Sisi had he answered the question directly…